WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to reinstate the death sentence of Douglas Lovell, a Utah man convicted of murdering a woman to prevent her from testifying against him in a rape case. The justices rejected the state’s appeal without comment, leaving in place a Utah Supreme Court decision that overturned Lovell’s sentence while upholding his murder conviction.
Lovell was found guilty of killing Joyce Yost in 1985 after his attempts to hire hitmen to silence her failed. Prosecutors said he ultimately kidnapped and strangled her himself to prevent her from testifying in a rape trial against him.
The Utah Supreme Court ruled that Lovell’s defense attorneys failed to properly challenge or respond to testimony about his excommunication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The court determined that this oversight prevented jurors from fairly considering all the evidence before sentencing him to death in 2015.
A state judge later ruled in 2021 that the church had not interfered in Lovell’s trial when it set guidelines for what local church leaders could say as character witnesses. Lovell had argued that these witnesses were either silenced by the church or never contacted by his court-appointed attorney.
